


Married With Benefits

by Fox_the_Hermit



Category: Bleach
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Gen, but they will try, these people do not know how to do relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 23:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20054374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_the_Hermit/pseuds/Fox_the_Hermit
Summary: “So, Kisuke, I must ask you. How do you feel about getting married to my cousin, Kurotsuchi Mayuri?”[UraMayu Week Day Three - Arranged Marriage]





	Married With Benefits

“So, Kisuke, how do you feel about getting married?" Yoruichi asks him, casually leaning against the doorframe.

Kisuke looks up from the pile of paperwork he’s meant to be filling in and filing away, and blinks at her. Either he’s about to be the subject of a joke, Yoruichi is planning something for the future, or she’s actually serious about this, in some way. Which is certainly an unlikely option...

“Married to whom, Yoruichi-san?” He raises his eyebrows. “If you are proposing to me, I would like some time to properly consider the offer.” 

“I’m sorry Kisuke, I don’t think a Captain can marry her soon-to-be third seat. Besides, if I was proposing, I wouldn’t do it like this.”

No. She’d probably make a whole spectacle of it, at his expense, and then propose again in private, once the shock has worn off.

Marriage. He considers it.

“I am fairly certain the only other person I know well enough to consider marrying would be Tessai-san, I think. We are friends - and with his rank, I don’t have to be too careful with concealing the details of my work.”

He might be part of the Second, but with Yoruichi as Captain - he has to supervise the Onmitsukido branches too.

And if he is to be promoted to third seat… 

Frankly, he is not certain how Yoruichi would ever be able to swing that. He’s not a member of the Stealth Corps, no matter how much he has trained with her or how competent he is.

...Maybe that’s why she’s pulling him to third, and not second seat. A non-Onmi lieutenant in a leadership position? A laughable concept.

Yoruichi sighs, and walks in, sliding the doors closed behind her, and sits down, looking serious.

Surely… “They are not planning to make _ you _ marry, are they?” Kisuke asks. ‘They’ being the clan elders, of course.

“No. It’s not me.” Yoruichi sighs. “I am not certain that you know, but I have a cousin.”

“Yes - I am afraid I do not recall his name. I have heard that he is, an, ah, acquired taste.”

“He is indeed... eccentric. And a bastard. Sort of. The elders are concerned that if he continues his experiments and research with the nature of souls as obviously as he does now, there will be trouble - for everyone.” Yoruichi shifts, and looks away from him. “The elders think that close supervision, as well as a positive influence that can, at the very least, teach subtlety , may prevent him from ending up in Muken.”

Muken? That is… concerning, for a bastard noble to be so eccentric as to risk ending up there . 

It would be most disgraceful for the Shihouin, even if the member is a bastard child.

Does Yoruichi want him to deal with him?

“Yoruichi-san, I think you’ve rather mistaken me for an assassin,” Kisuke says, laughing, but Yoruichi doesn’t smile.

“If he was married, of course, then the blame could be put on the spouse, the first time he fucks up too badly - but not badly _enough_ that the spouse would need to quietly dispose of him to hide the truth.”

So not a marriage with another noble. An Onmi plant, then? Yoruichi is training a new operative herself - is she asking if this would be too hard of a mission for the girl. 

He can't honestly say he knows her enough to be able to advise her on this matter.

“So, Kisuke, I must ask you. How do you feel about getting married to my cousin, Kurotsuchi Mayuri?”

* * *

It’s all done quickly, neatly, and quietly.

As far as any interested parties will find out, Urahara Kisuke and Kurotsuchi Mayuri met over a clan function, develop a mutual interest over several extended meetings, and quietly get married without any fanfare and barely a dinner to accompany it.

Not much attention to unwanted bastard cousins, after all, so the only guests are those of the Shihouin family who absolutely have to bear witness, along with Tessai and Shiba Kuukaku as invited guests.

The wedding ceremony is actually the first time Kisuke gets to see his future husband.

He’s a short, slim man with bright blue hair and a sharp, vaguely irritated expression on his face that appears whenever he thinks he isn’t being watched. 

His eyes almost the exact same shade of yellow as Yoruichi’s. 

Kurotsuchi doesn’t look too impressed with Kisuke, staring disdainfully simple black clothes, last-minute acquisitions not entirely suitable for a treasured ward of the Shihouin - but then, Kisuke somehow gets the feel this man is not usually impressed with much of anything or anyone.

He just has to trust that Yoruichi wouldn’t have let him fall into a truly dire situation. Just has to trust her that his new husband won’t make a mistake any time soon, and land Kisuke in the very prison he’s now the supervisor of.

* * *

  
Nothing really changes, except that now, instead of living in his own quarter in the division barracks, Kisuke goes to Kurotsuchi’s house to sleep, in a small but comfortable room of his own.

Just enough space to sleep, work, and sometimes work on his theories and thought experiments.

He’s surprised, really - he didn’t expect to get his own space. 

Kurotsuchi didn’t offer him to share his own room. Hasn’t even taken him inside once - Kisuke expected that at least that first night, he’d be interested in consummating the marriage. But he hadn’t, courteously but abruptly telling Kisuke where to sleep, and leaving him alone to sort himself out.

It’s… okay. He’d expected - worse, if he’s being honest. With the power imbalance, he’d have to do whatever his husband asks - he’s expected to do so in this situation, really. But Kurotsuchi asks for nothing.

They see each other over dinner, sometimes - if Kisuke comes home early enough. Kurotsuchi tells him about whatever he’s been working on or experimenting that day - poison’s, often, but sometimes kido and fascinating new devices, or hell butterfly dissections, or some such. It’s interesting, although Kisuke never feels comfortable offering his own knowledge. He doesn’t think it would be welcome. Or his worries about how cold and detached Kurotsuchi gets when he gets to work on live specimens, how... _cruel_ he starts to become. Alive and energetic - but at the same time, cold.

That _is_ why the marriage is necessary, he supposes. And it's not his place to remark on it; merely be a back-up plan for if it becomes too much of a problem.

* * *

He starts cleaning the house religiously, when Kurotsuchi asks him to.

He follows him around the lab, touching nothing, helping out with an experiment when ordered to, but nothing more.

Requests to come home earlier he has to decline on the grounds of being far too busy - and he is. If not for all of the lieutenant’s paperwork he has to do, he would try to obey the request to return home at a reasonable time.

That’s how a good spouse should act, isn’t it? Obedient to a fault. And his husband is intelligent and interesting and he is not cruel - not to Kisuke anyway, and he suspects that Yoruichi might have had a hand in that, after seeing a few flashes of anger at failed experiments. 

His requests- Kisuke is okay with following them, for now. 

Utter obedience means he doesn't have to try and figure out what he's actually supposed to be doing in this relationship he needs to be faking.

* * *

"Kneel,” Kurotsuchi-san commands, and Kisuke drops to his knees instantly, head bowed.

Long-nailed fingers grab at his chin and forcefully tilt his head up, until his eyes are locked with his husband’s.

He decides to be meek and pliant, for whatever confrontation is about to happen. There’s no point in _ not _ being obedient. Whatever Kurotsuchi wants, it’ll have to be done with in the next hour, because even his spousal duties do not supersede his job. Until then, he can just follow along - it is not like they have been interacting much at _ all _, and, well - spousal duties must be done sometime, Kisuke supposes.

Kurotsuchi-san makes a sound of disgust, and lets go of his face.

Kisuke looks down, unwilling to meet those cold golden eyes.

“Have you no self-respect?”

Self-respect?

“This is meant to be a partnership, according to my dear cousin, and yet all I see is a servant to the Onmitsukido. An obedient dog. Even when here, at home, with your own partner, you act like nothing more than a mere _ cog _ in a mechanism.”

What else is he meant to be doing? This marriage is merely to give Kurotsuchi-san a scapegoat if need be. They _ need _ to be nothing more than simply sharing a roof and being seen as living together - anything else is extra. 

Had he missed some details of the arrangement?

“You do not work for me, and this is not a workplace. Act like it.”

What is that supposed to mean?

* * *

“Do you have _ any _ advice? You are his best friend - surely…”

“Have you tried being the one to initiate something?”

“You told me that if I hurt him or made a mistake, you’d geld me, dismember me, and feed my entrails to cats. And I have done as you asked - I keep my temper in check around him, I do not hurt him, I have not even asked him to _bed_ yet.”

”It takes more than a mere abstinence from cruelty to build a connection, cousin. Do something nice for him - make his food, maybe, if he leaves too early and arrives too late to do so."

“I am not a _ cook _.”

“Well, maybe you ought to learn.”

* * *

Something- changes.

Kisuke’s not sure what, or why, not at first, when he keeps finding leftover food in the kitchen when he comes home, miso soup and rice and whatnot forgotten and left out, still warm - his husbands forgotten late dinners? Which somehow seem to be both different and also still warm come morning, when Kisuke wakes up to shunpo off to work.

Not until they start moving from the kitchen to trays standing in front of his room.

They’re not forgotten meals - they’re left out there. For _ him. _

Why?

Not that he’s ungrateful - not at all. It’s… nice to have warm food waiting for him. However simple it may be.

He doesn’t even worry over the fact that his husband works on poisons for the Onmi on a regular basis.

* * *

"You promised me an _ interesting _ spouse. Yet all this one does is work, work, and occasionally come home to _ continue working _." Kurotsuchi is frowning at Yoruichi, but there’s something in his eyes...

She thinks it’s more than mere _ boredom _ that’s dragged him all the way from his house to the windowsill of her bedroom. If he was merely bored, he’d have found entertainment.

Potentially illegal entertainment - but entertainment nonetheless.

"What would you have me do? Fire him, so he can stay home for you to play with all day? Demote him to a cleaner, and have someone _ else _ set his work hours instead of his own self?" 

"That sounds like a _ grand _ idea, considering his idea of work hours is _ all of them _!"

“With his current clearance- you know I can not actually do that. He is my third seat, after all.”

“Then-”

“If he thinks there’s work to be done, then he’ll do it on the compound roof if he’s not allowed in the office. Yes, while my trainee might be saying he slacks of all the time - frankly, without the amount of paperwork he gets done, we’d grind to a standstill. Goodness knows my lieutenant is _ useless. _”

“If your whole division depends on him, cousin, then maybe you and he should work to find _better people to run the rest of it._” He sounds _genuinely_ _angry, _eyes narrowed to slits, the words hissed out like an angry cat.

“_ I _ know that very well,” Yoruichi interrupts him. “Have you tried telling _ him _ that?”

Her cousin snarls, face distorted by one of those grimaces he does _ so _ well. 

She gets sidetracked for a moment, wondering whether he practices them in a mirror every week, and misses a few words of the angry reply.

“-and he doesn’t _ listen to my complaints. _He spends every waking hour working, as though paperwork regarding minor disputes in the division is more important than the tenshintai that he’s been sketching out in the brief moments he eats.”

“Tenshintai?”

“It is a tool meant to manifest Zanpakutou spirits in order to obtain Bankai in mere _ days _ , instead of years.” Kurotsuchi throws his hands up in the air. “If he had the time to work with me, I have no doubt we’d revolutionise Soul Society. But as long as he’s stuck doing _ paperwork for spies…” _

Days? Well, now, that is _ interesting. _

“I may have an idea,” Yoruichi says slowly, thinking of Hikifune’s promotion. “And I think you are going to like it.”

* * *

"Good news, Kisuke: your captaincy examination is taking place in four days. I fully expect you to get the position."

"...Yoruichi-san, I don't even have _ Bankai _."

"Your husband told me about the blueprints for that Tenshintai doll. I figured four days is more than enough time for you to finish it and use it."

"_ Yoruichi-san! _"

“I suggest you start thinking of what to do with your division once you have it. You always wished there would be more space for research in the Gotei, haven’t you?”

* * *

Benihime is terrifying to fight - even more terrifying that she is in their shared Inner World, somehow the fact that she’s out of place making everything worse.

He doesn’t even win, in the end - not exactly. 

He surrenders to her before she can kill him, and she takes control, and apparently that’s all that he needed to do in the first place.

Idly, he wonders if that would be the case for all who use the Tenshintai - or whether each relationship would demand a different answer, a different resolution.

Well, he will have time to test it out in the future - once he gets to found a research institute.

Which, now that he managed to get Bankai a whole four hours before the proficiency exams, is now very much a possibility. 

Now - he has to go and change, because he doubts that the Captains would approve if he showed up to the tests _covered_ in blood.

* * *

“Congratulations, Urahara-taicho,” Kurotsuchi says when he gets home after inauguration, yellow eyes glinting in delight. “I hope that _now_ matters will be at arranged so that I get to see you one evening a week, at the very least.”  
"No need to worry, Kurotsuchi-san - you may well be seeing me all week, every week."  
For a second, Kisuke gets to be treated to the sight of a completely speechless, utterly confused Kurotsuchi.  
"That is, if you accept my offer to be the vice-president of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute."

* * *

It takes time to earn the division's trust - especially with the upheaval, and massive roster changes, looking for suitable interested candidates in other division, to transform the division from a combat one to a research one. He knows it will take time.

And the outright hostility from his Lieutenant is very much not helping him right now, when what he really needs is her support - and maybe guidance. How does one lead a division, instead of merely making sure the orders from on high get carried out?

But with his partner at his side, ready to support his decisions - or argue louder than Hiyori, sometimes - Kisuke thinks he can do it.  
Even if there's so much paperwork he barely has time to think about working on his newest pet project. The Hougyoku.  
Something that can dissolve the boundaries between what's possible and what isn't - change the very structure of souls.  
A most grand of anniversary gifts, a new creation with unlimited potential for experimentation.

* * *

He does not show his face when he fights Aizen, does not use his Shikai around the afflicted shinigami while he chases off the vile man, promising to himself to deal with him the moment he stabilises the victims.

They come first.

Then he'll deal with everything else.

* * *

"The Council finds Urahara Kisuke guilty of experimentation on his fellow shinigami and Captains, and thus sentences him to-"

The doors fly open, and Kisuke turns his head to stare at the intrusion. Yoruichi, come to rescue him?  
No. It's _Mayuri._

_What is he doing there?_ If the Council decides they collaborated-  
"The experimentation was conducted by me," Mayuri announces, dodging the guards finally reacting to his presence. "My husband was not aware of it at the time - and is now merely covering for me, as the marriage between us for that one reason."  
There is a stunned silence.  
  
In the mess that follows, the only thing Kisuke can remember is a last, bright, stunning smile directed at him, before they were both dragged away, so the Council could reconsider their decision, and then pronounce Kisuke innocent and Mayuri guilty, from more evidence surfacing - recordings in the labs that Kisuke has no memory of, and recordings that should have been there being conspicuously absent.

  
Before Mayuri would vanish from Soul Society, along with Yoruichi and Tessai and the Hollowfied Shinigami.

Before Kisuke left alone in the labs, to start cleaning up the mess left by the Council's investigators.

Before he'd have to spend every day knowing Aizen was the one responsible for it all, and have to face him as a fellow Captain like there was nothing, nothing remotely wrong about any of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Bit short and missing some scenes, perhaps, but I do think this works more or less fine as is!  
Reviews are love, my dear readers!
> 
> Here's a link to the [UraMayu Week tumblr](https://uramayuevents.tumblr.com), and here's a link to the [UraMayu discord server](https://discordapp.com/invite/UHWVxg5)!


End file.
